Vikram Chandra, Novelist and teaching Professor in the English Department

The origins of human storytelling are lost somewhere in pre-history. But over the centuries, across cultures, writers have worked out what makes good stories work their magic on audiences. They have codified these elements of story, and have developed a “pattern language” that allows them to describe and discuss these effective design practices, and thus to hone their own usage of these tools. Chandra will discuss how experts use these seemingly simple techniques to create an infinite variety of emotionally-engaging, persuasive, and potentially transformative stories.

Yesterday’s ancient campfires are today’s digital news feeds. From a 10-second snap to a 140-character tweet, social media has transformed the way we tell stories. While ancient campfires provided the center stage for a sole storyteller, today’s digital news feeds are noisier with many players, from friends to brands, each competing to share their own story. This democratization of storytelling has empowered the rise of unheard and creative narratives, but is also unforgiving to marketers who still treat social media as digital billboards. In this session, Tai will share the do’s and don’ts behind engaging and effective social storytelling.

The Internet has democratized communication. One result is that everyone has access to free and low-cost publishing platforms. Anyone can distribute low quality (inaccurate, slanted, incomplete) information. Anyone can distribute false or misleading information to try to persuade people to behave in a particular way (buy a product, vote for a candidate, etc.). Information that is low quality or simply false is “information pollution”. Costs of publishing are already about zero and only will fall further, so the opportunity to pollute will never go away (and, in fact, information pollution including “fake news” has already been with us for hundreds of years, it’s just getting much worse). Ultimately, the primary way to address information pollution has to be through educating and supporting information consumers. They need to know where to look, how to evaluate, what to trust. Providers of high quality information need to support readers and viewers by providing credible signals and other reliable indicators of quality. MacKie-Mason will describe the information pollution problem, how best to address it, and suggest some specific signals and indicators that we can use to help.

In this time of fake news, dwindling newspaper readership and a plethora of choices, how does a local news site survive? Dinkelspiel will talk about the economic forces challenging the news business, Berkeleyside’s creative approaches for bringing in revenue, and how the small, but scrappy news site keeps on top of what is happening in Berkeley.